Kim Hyung-jun’s Critique of Modern Civil Society and ‘New Generation Theory’

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE Modern human society is an extension of modern civil society. It is important to reflect on the fundamental problems of modern civil society through our own thinking and to seek alternatives. The purpose of this study is to examine how Kim Hyeong-jun criticized modern civil society and developed the new generation theory based on Donghak's perseverance cosmos. He also tried to examine the problems of modern world citizenship as an extension of modern civil society.CONTENTS The roots of modern civil society lie in the natural science and individualism (liberalism) with two axes of positivism and rationality. Kim Hyung-jun philosophically analyzed and criticized these principles of modern civil society, and introduced Western modern critical theories such as W. Dilthey and K. Mannheim.RESULTS Western modern civil society achieved civil liberation from feudal oppression. But gradually, based on free competition, capitalism was transformed into monopoly capital, and liberal democracy into fascist dictatorship. Kim Hyeong-jun saw that the roots of modern civil society lie in the monadic natural scientific awareness and individual liberalism, and he sympathized with and criticized the theories of Mannheim and Dilthey, and pursued the ideological unity of Innaecheonism. And, while proposing a change of fundamental principle to overcome this, it was taken as the main core of the new generation theory and global citizenship. A global citizen, as Kim Hyeong-jun means, corresponds to a creative person who will represent all mankind, an international democratic citizen, and a world-historical individual.